I have been a Didgeridoo player and crafter for a lot of years and I want to share what I have learned over the years in regard to women playing the didgeridoo.
I was around 13 years old when I got my first Didgeridoo given to me which was made by my father and my cousin who I addressed as Uncle. It was a nice looking didje, and I found it pretty easy to get a good sound from it, this was around 1977.
There weren’t a lot of Didgeridoos around in those days, a lot of people didn’t know what it was or how it was made or what it was used for, and I am talking about Australians, including some Aboriginal people. I was working in construction in Sydney in my late teens and I remember talking about wanting to make Didgeridoos, and people used to laugh about it saying stuff like “Why would you want make them?” and “Nobody would be interested in them“.
That didn’t matter to me because I had a passion for the instrument and wanted to learn as much as I could about it.
Around the mid 1980’s someone said to me “You know Women aren’t supposed to play them!” which I found odd. Over the years, I was told this by a few more people from different Tribal Areas who I had no reason to doubt. I took it as true, after all, who am I to tell other tribal areas what is and isn’t right on their own country?
I continued meeting different people from all over Australia and I learned that the Didgeridoo originated from Arnhem Land in the far North where it is called a “Yidaki” (say it how you want, there are different pronunciations and different ways to spell it – in English that is).
I met other great didge players in my travels around the world who also shared information with me about other Tribal groups who have toured from Australia to present their culture and to share and perform their dances and stories.
This all got me thinking, I had heard from different tribal areas that a woman couldn’t play the didge or in some areas a woman couldn’t even decorate or even touch a “didge”, each area had different repercussions if a woman did play. In some tribal areas it is said that if a woman played didgeridoo she would become highly fertile and have multiple babies or other areas would say that she would become infertile and not be able to have children at all.
While I was in California in 2003 at a didgeridoo gathering, I met Djalu Gurruwiwi from the Gulpu Clan in Arnhem Land, Djalu has for a long while been regarded as the World Didgeridoo or Yidaki Master. While I was at the gathering someone asked him through his sister about women playing Didgeridoo or Yidaki and the response was “We, up at the top end in Arnhem Land have still got that tradition of not playing but sometimes during a ceremony a lady just go’s along and just gets the Yidaki of a man and just starts playing it just for fun!”
You can listen to the comments in the Audio link bellow.
ABC Radio Nationals – Yankee Doodle Didge in 2003 – by Claudia Taranto.
Here is a clip of a respected Aboriginal Woman playing didgeridoo in 1978.
This is Essie Coffee (The Bush Queen –RIP) a Muruwari woman and the co-founder of the Western Aboriginal Legal Service, the clip is from her TV show titled “My Survival As An Aboriginal” released in 1978 Preview Here.
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Then there is the recordings from the mid 1900’s that I used to have in my Gallery + Retail Shop in Dubbo that named a woman as the didgeridoo player.
If I ever find a copy of that I will be sure to share it.
I have taught women how to play didje around the world, but I alway advise them not to play in public if they come to Australia, because there is a good chance that you will offend some people.
Some of the women didje players that I have met around the world have also approached me with their argument as to why women can’t play and that they think it is wrong, I think some of them thought that they could change the thoughts of 1000 communities by taking it up with me. After my advice to them in regard to playing didje in public in Australia, they said that they want to boycott that.
I gave them my advice and wished them luck.
